


A Spell

by Aithilin



Series: MerMay 2020 [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, M/M, Magic, MerMay 2020, Promises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:01:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23992693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: Ignis was not someone who took magic lightly. All magic needed a balance.
Relationships: Noctis Lucis Caelum/Ignis Scientia
Series: MerMay 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1730110
Comments: 5
Kudos: 50





	A Spell

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted at my Twitter for a Tarot Prompt Challenge. 
> 
> The High Priestess: "[...] she understands that magic always comes with a price. When you ask the sea for something, you must give something in return."

“I wish we could always do this.”

It had just slipped without thinking. The wish hung between them like the spell that it was, building its energy and waiting for the right catalyst to set it in motion. It had circled between them for years; the weight of it building with each passing year and each passing meeting, until the magic of the simplest of wishes spoken beneath the setting sun promise of fireworks threatened to spill over and leave them speechlessly bound to each other. 

Magic was a balance, and they both knew to tread lightly now that something was set in motion. At least they had, once. In the first years of that sweet spell— that simple wish— when it was still weak enough to be dismissed and demurred away, distraction provided by the excitement of the carnival’s chocobo races out on the platforms across the water or the fireworks illuminating the night sky around them. 

Ignis took a deep breath before he spoke; his words were carefully chosen around the phrasing that the human Prince on the pier had let slip into existence. The calm waters and languid waves of the Altissean cove lapped at the wood Ignis was braced on and Noctis was stretched out across. Ignis had likened him to a cat earlier that evening, when they settled in the golden light of the setting sun and watched the Celluna Cascades blaze with the reflection. When they had shared a meal of carnival food from colourful little boxes folded into the shapes of the creatures they represented. 

He had demurred the suggestion away before; let the wish linger or swept it away with a silencing kiss. He had smiled his way through the spell before, his gut wrenching with the effort to fight this current that threatened to sweep him further inland than he had ever ventured before. 

But here, beneath the strands of warm carnival lights— feathers and confetti floating through the city’s canals while the cheerful music carried across the still water on the winds— Ignis found his usual arguments fading. He could admire Noctis like this, haloed in the soft light of the Altissean lamps, floating among the stars and sparkling reflections of the city alike. He could feel the spell overwhelming him. The logic of the magic pressed against his lips. “If we did, something else would be lost. There’s a balance to be kept, Noctis.”

Noctis was human, and visiting the shining city on the water as he did every year. He was just visiting from a distant city in a distant kingdom. And Ignis was different, visiting Altissia from his own home in the depths beyond the protective walls and shining cascades. They had met on the same starlit waters years ago, when Noctis had slipped his guards to watch the lights from the peace of this private cove, and Ignis had slipped the taboos of his people for the same: to surface and watch the strange concoctions and magics of the humans gleaming across his waters. 

There was a balance that need to be kept to keep this working as it was. 

Ignis flicked his tail in the water, watching Noctis for any hint of an opinion on the matter. Watching for anything in his understanding of what he was asking. He was mostly a shadow beneath the calm surface, the seawater sliding off his scales when he deigned to show his full form to the human smiling at him with that bright, lively, endearing smile. 

The lights of the city dimmed. Movement across the open waters— boats moving into place, the distant cliffs suddenly crowded with onlookers, floating platforms and barges were full as the shadows stretched long over the mirror the water had become. The world held its breath in anticipation, and for a few brief moments in their sheltered corner of the waterfront, Ignis could see the stars reflected around them. 

Noctis turned his attention upward to watch the first fireworks shatter the night sky. The magic still hanging between them in a pregnant pause, a contract waiting to be signed. 

“Your place, or mine?”

The carnival came to Altissia each year— a week of games and colours and the vibrant cacophony of life that came with a rush of people to see the sights— and Noctis came with it. He was swept in on the tide, like the driftwood Ignis had wondered at in his childhood. He had always been called upward to the stars. 

Ignis had found that Noctis came with the feathers and confetti, with the strange food shared at the end of a pier. The prince came with the intoxicating noise and vibrancy— the promise of life that Ignis could have never imagined in his own home— and adventure. An adventure that Ignis had learnt to cherish, even as he ventured back to the muted, grey depths and the his own vibrant world of the reefs and shallows beyond the city’s protective cliffs. 

He had wanted to see the kingdom Noctis claimed as his home. 

He wanted to show Noctis the world just beneath the waves that was his own domain. 

But there was a spell between them now, waiting for that catalyst to be birthed out into the world. A spell that was meant to change them and claim them, and Ignis felt the calm of certainty even as the night sky shattered into the cartoonish shapes of chocobos and moogles above them. 

Magic required a balance. A trade. And the universe had set something into motion long before either of them met. 

“Yours, Noctis.” It was another promise, another spell that Ignis knew the price would be far easier to stomach in the end. “Always yours.”

A home for a home, freedom for freedom.


End file.
